Sacagawea Dollar Coins - Time To Go!

Actually, JBuck the value proposition for the dollar bill vs. dollar coin depends heavily on the methodology used. If you factor transportation costs in...

You have the Dollar Coin Alliance (guess what their interest is?) who references several GAO studies.

But there is this Fed Reserve working paper described in the Washington Post (Fed) article.

And this Washington Post (GAO) article - the savings are a tax on consumers, based on minting 1.6 Dollar coins for every paper bill and assuming we still use cash in substantial amounts in 30 years... also here at NPR

Finally, for giggles, Watch a Senator try to use a vending machine onPlanet Money



The actual GAO report here actually talks about a whole range of reforms and management improvements needed in the Fed's coin handling.

Comparison to other countries was brought up earlier and I feel that the Euro and its forms must be mentioned. The Euro surpasses the US Dollar in face value of coins & notes in circulation.

Coins are issued in €2, €1, 50c, 20c, 10c, 5c, 2c, and 1c denominations. Notes are issued in €500, €200, €100, €50, €20, €10, and €5 denominations.

So, you notice that in this system, the coin manages the €1 and €2 responsibilities. However, there is not only a 1c coin, but a 2c coin as well that would be a superfluous addition as compared to the USD system (assuming the 25c and 20c coins are interchangeable).

Currently, the Euro trades higher than the USD, but that has not always been the case and is not an argument for the existence of the Euro cent coin because it is "worth more."

I just thought that for the purposes of considering changes to US coin and currency, taking a look at the Euro would be the most advantageous and prescient.

Get rid of the Cent, Nickel, and Dollar bill as all costs more to make than they are worth. Also, start circulating the half dollar again.

"... Dollar bill ... costs more to make than they are worth ..."

Not sure why you would think this. They cost about six cents each to make and, currently, last about six years.

Lots of real solid data about the dollar-coin-dollar-bill decision in:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/paym...20131211.pdf ... PDF ... Costs and Benefits of Replacing the $1 Federal Reserve Note with a $1 U.S. Coin

My own personal highlights reel:

Cost Parity: Rounding the numbers for both clarity & sanity, the coin will cost ~5x as much to make and last ~5x as long, which is pretty much a wash.

Dollar Bill Life Expectancy #1: Foreign paper currency that was successfully replaced with coins in the 1980s had a (very short) life expectancy of ~18 months; our stuff always lasted longer, because their paper was paper, while our 'paper' money is actually a cotton-linen blend.

Dollar Bill Life Expectancy #2: The American systems that tested the quality (and certified the validity) of our paper currency could only work with one face of the bill; every bill misfaced (fed backwards) was rejected & shredded. When the Fed improved this capability (perhaps by adding a second source & sensor so they could scan both sides of the bill at the same time) the reject rate dropped precipitously and, therefor, by the magic of math, the life expectancy of the lowly Federal Reserve Note increased dramatically.

Counterfeiting: While our paper money is continuously cycled through the Federal Reserve system to remove worn & counterfeit bills, there is no comparable high-throughput system in place to detect counterfeit dollar coins. Go figure what happens next and, if you can't, ask the UK Royal Mint about the UKP 1 coin.

Lots more good stuff where that came from.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

I would like to see the U.S. get rid of dollar bills and pennies like Canada did. But I would like to see dollar and two dollar coins that represent AMERICA not just people from history or presidents. Mostly it's greed that drives my opinion.I find a lot of my coins with a metal detector and would like to find dollars to help pay for gas to travel to good hunting sites. High schools provide plenty of quarters but it takes more time. LOL

I would probably make that assumption.

As I mentioned earlier, if we were given the choice of action between killing the cent or the one dollar note, we should chose the cent. It is easily proven to be the correct course of action.

Not really a tough call. The cent is a loser no matter what, even if the materials were free. There is no possible way to spin the numbers like ikeyPikey did with the dollar argument.



They could just stop printing the notes for a while and make the Fed fulfill orders with dollar coins instead. That would make for a fun experiment.